CHOOK

The slaughterhouse set my head pounding:

all those chooks jostling along the disassembly lines.

All the men there who shake hands with corpses.

All the codeine lighting. All the flesh.

I'd never though flesh was grotesque 'til I went there,

'til I saw what men do to chooks with knives.

Yet there was something arousing about it -

The chook chook of the machines? The conveyor belt?

Perhaps. I'd rather it was the men, elbow deep

in chook meat, groping wet innards,

packaging them. The fact they do all that here

under one roof. None go home. None have wives.

I think I began to like the smell of men and meat;

the mechanical nature of work and lines.

I began to want to be a chook, paralysed by light,

manhandled on the belts - torn - reformed - repackaged all night.